SARRP 200 Platform for Image Guided Micro Irradiation

 描述(申请人提供)：现代肿瘤学治疗通常包括综合治疗，包括手术、放射治疗和/或化疗。在过去的几十年里，所有这些学科都取得了令人难以置信的进步，例如，放射肿瘤学家现在能够靶向并整合他们的射线，以最大限度地减少对正常组织的不必要治疗，医学肿瘤学家也扩大了他们的医疗设备，包括专门针对肿瘤细胞的生物制剂。然而，不幸的是，除了极少数例外，这些进展导致的患者结果充其量是渐进的。如此令人失望的结果与许多这些创新疗法在临床前水平上所展示的显著好处背道而驰。这种失败的一种解释可能是将实验室科学转换到床边，或者反之亦然，这体现在研究人员在评估新策略或代理人时所采用的标准实践中：即，每一种新的代理人或技术等都要在 与世隔绝或作为与护理标准的比较。即使在进行组合测试时(即与其他试剂一起测试)，任何时候都不会结合可能的其他方式、手术或放射来评估新的试剂。尽管如此，例如，约50%的患者在治疗过程中将接受分次放射治疗，这种治疗已知会影响他们的肿瘤、其血管系统和紧邻的正常组织，所有这些因素反过来可能会影响肿瘤对随后的化疗和/或生物制剂的反应。为了解决这一不足，我们的应用程序申请资金，在罗切斯特大学医学中心(URMC)购买用于动物和细胞的精密X-辐照器/锥形束CT。该仪器是一个小动物辐射研究平台或SARRP，将满足该机构医学研究的关键需求，因为它将允许研究人员在临床前模型中评估具有现实辐射方案的制剂的协同作用，从而实现对人类体验的模拟。此外，SARRP将与其他最先进的成像设备一起使用，通过允许研究人员对小动物模型(大鼠和小鼠)进行图像引导照射来扩展他们的能力。总体而言，在罗切斯特大学现有技术中增加SARRP将增加正常组织和肿瘤组织研究的机会，为研究人员提供更合适的模型系统来评估肿瘤-正常组织微环境、许多癌症患者的正常组织效应和良性疾病。

 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Modern oncologic treatment usually involves a combination of treatments, including surgery, radiation therapy and/or chemotherapy. Incredible advances have been made in all of these disciplines over the past few decades, with, for example, radiation oncologists now being able to target and conform their beams in order to minimize unnecessary treatment of normal tissues and with the medical oncologists expanding their armamentarium to include biologics specifically targeted to tumor cells. Unfortunately, however, with only very few exceptions, the patient outcomes that have resulted from these advances have been incremental at best. Such disappointing results fly in the face of the significant benefits that many of these innovative treatments have demonstrated at the preclinical level. One explanation for this failure may be the translation of bench science to the bedside or vice versa, and is embodied in the standard practice employed by researchers when assessing a new strategy or agent: that is, each novel agent or technique, etc. is tested either in isolation or as a comparison against standard of care. Even when tested in combinations (i.e. with other agents), at no time is a novel agent assessed in conjunction with the likely additional modalities, surgery or irradiation. This is despite the fact that, for example, ~50% of patients wil experience fractionated radiation therapy during the course of their treatment, a therapy which is known to affect their tumor, its vasculature and the immediately surrounding normal tissues, all elements that may, in turn, affect the tumor's response to subsequent chemotherapy and/or biologics. In order to address this deficiency, our application requests funds to purchase a precision X- irradiator/cone beam CT for animal and cellular use at the University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC). The instrument, a small animal radiation research platform or SARRP, will address a critical need in medical research at the institution since it will allow investigatos to assess the synergy of agents with realistic radiation protocols in preclinical models, thereby trul modeling the human experience. Furthermore, the SARRP will be used in conjunction with other state-of-the-art imaging equipment, expanding researchers' abilities by allowing them to perform image-guided irradiation of small animal models (rats and mice). Overall, the addition of a SARRP to the technologies available at the University of Rochester will increase opportunities in both normal and tumor tissue research, providing investigators with more appropriate model systems for assessing tumor- normal tissue microenvironment, normal tissue effects seen in many cancer patients, and benign diseases.